


Girls’ Night In

by tawg



Series: The Dangers of Dating a High School Principal [6]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Clint has the best friends, I will find a way to work Pepper into every fic, M/M, Natasha is a bro, Phil is not in this one, background pepperony, clint may not be very good at relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-30
Updated: 2012-07-30
Packaged: 2017-11-11 01:39:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/473042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawg/pseuds/tawg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint gets some relationship advice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Girls’ Night In

Clint had been performing ‘stealth manoeuvres’ for three days when Natasha’s hand wrapped around his ankle with a crushing grip, and she dragged him out of the air duct. Clint tried to scramble away but Natasha planted her boot between his shoulder blades and forced him flat against the carpet. Upon reflection, Clint was willing to hear Natasha out.

“You’ve been sulking,” she said bluntly.

“No I haven’t,” Clint protested into the carpet. “I’ve just been busy.”

“Busy sulking.”

“I’m not-” Clint was cut off as Natasha hauled him upright and dusted him off. Most of the filth came from the ducts rather than the carpet. Clint was going to have to shoot off a memo to someone about that.

“You haven’t been by the tower since you got back from France,” Natasha said. “You haven’t been in your room since the morning after.”

“I’ve been-”

“Crawling around headquarters,” she finished. She had a firm hand on his shoulder, steering him down the hallway. “You’ve spent three days in the ceilings and the basements and the wall cavities, and you haven’t even been terrorising people in the process.” She shoved Clint into one of the break rooms, which was thankfully abandoned at the late hour, and pushed him down onto a battered couch. “Agent Rambeau is going to recommend you for psych assessment once she confirms that you haven’t died from asbestos poisoning.”

“See?” Clint said, looking up at Natasha with a grin. “I knew she liked me.”

Natasha pulled two mugs out of a cupboard, and a small box of chocolate powder. She kept silent as she put the kettle on to boil, and got a carton of full cream milk out of the fridge. She remained silent as she prepared their drinks, making them rich and piping hot. Her impassive mask didn’t shift even when she pulled a small container from her utility belt and dropped two marshmallows into each mug. She handed one to Clint, and then stood silently before him, both hands wrapped around her own. She stared at him critically, and Clint met her gaze without flinching. But Natasha still saw everything she needed to, hidden in the set of Clint’s jaw and the lines around his eyes. Clint was trained in espionage and interrogation, but at the end of the day he just shot things. Natasha was the expert in people.

“You fucked up,” she said. It was an apt diagnosis, and Clint made no effort to deny it as Natasha seated herself at the other end of the couch, her legs crossed at the knee.

“Yeah,” he said at last, working on the theory that maybe putting the sinking, choking feeling within him into words might make him feel better somehow. “I fucked up.” Clint rolled the mug back and forth between his hands, staring down at it as he lined up how to explain the full extent of his fuckery. He would have preferred to keep his shame to himself, but as the choice was either pouring his heart out to Natasha or talking to the psych department – there was no contest. Clint would take the assassin over hugging it out any day.

“We had sex,” he said at last.

“You and Mister Museum.”

“That is correct.”

“… And?”

Clint could only stare at his hot chocolate with a look of utter heartbreak on his face. “And it was awful.”

It had been beyond awful. It had been the worst sex of Clint’s life (and Clint had some stories when it came to bad sex) – and it had all been Clint’s fault. He hadn’t thought that it could go downhill after the needless dash for condoms and then the ‘happy hostage snuggle hour’ with Boryn, but it had. Clint’s hands had been shaky. He’d gotten lube all over the bedspread. He’d pressed in too fast, and shifted Coulson’s leg in a way that had made him yelp because, oh yeah, _of course_ there were still stitches holding an incredibly deep wound together. And then, with the fear of hurting Phil further, all hope of a magical experience had died. They’d failed to achieve any kind of rhythm. Clint came too early and Phil didn’t come at all. It had been humiliating. It hadn’t just been bad sex, it had been one of the most crushing experiences of Clint’s adult life. He hadn’t even been able to look at Phil after, had barely tolerated a brief cuddle because as soon as Phil had uttered the horrible, soul-killing, well-intentioned words, “It’s okay-” Clint had given up an acted on instinct.

“You ran,” Natasha surmised.

“Can you blame me? I moved so fast, I nearly left one of my shoes behind. I just- Mission terminated, you know? All agents regroup.”

“And you explained that to him?”

“What? No. I just told him that I needed to get back and that I’d see him later.”

“So you had bad sex-”

“The worst sex.”

“-with a man that you’re crazy about. You ran out after, without saying anything to this person who does not have a way to contact you and demand an explanation, and then you’ve proceeded to essentially neglect this guy you’ve been calling or texting or e-mailing at least once a day for the past two weeks. You have completely cut off communications while you curl of in the ceiling and lick your wounded pride.”

“… Yeah, that about sums it up.”

Natasha slapped Clint sharply across the back of the head, and Clint didn’t have the heart to protest. He certainly deserved it. “Drink your chocolate,” Natasha instructed him. And while Clint would usually make a joke about the wisdom of accepting edibles from an assassin, he was aware that Natasha had a process. She would use the time it took them to drink in companionable silence to devise some way out, to somehow salvage the situation. She would find some loophole or secret entrance back into the good books, and things could go back to normal. Clint would follow any instruction, would do whatever it took to bury the mess that he had made.

When they had finished their hot chocolate, Natasha put her mug on the side table with a neat little click of ceramic on wood. “You need to apologise,” she said bluntly. 

Clint flopped over and pressed his face against her thigh, and let out a long, pathetic whine. Natasha patted his head three times, and uttered a largely insincere, “Aw, baby.”

In true SHIELD style, Natasha didn’t let Clint wallow for long before forcing him to be productive. In true Russian ninja assassin style, Natasha’s preferred post-feelings activity was sparring. 

“You move too slow,” Natasha chided him.

Clint adjusted his stance, tucked his head down and lifted his hands up. When it came to fisticuffs, Clint always started with boxing – it was good for getting in some hits, and people tended to underestimate his skill. “I’ve spent three days living off Snickers bars,” Clint felt inclined to point out.

“No,” Natasha replied, before aiming a kick at his knee. Clint stepped back sharply, twisted, and aimed a punch at her ribs. Natasha caught his arm and smacked her palm to his forehead. Knockout in three seconds. “Mister Museum.”

“It’s not for a lack of trying,” Clint insisted as he and Natasha separated and started again. “It took us a month to manage to have coffee together.”

“Try harder,” Natasha advised.

Clint scowled at her. “If I try any harder, the planet might get invaded again.” Natasha scoffed, but Clint felt like he was onto something. “Look at the kind of success rate we’ve had so far. First meeting – attacked by museum exhibits. I meet him at work – radioactive hamster-man attack. We go out for coffee – golem rampage. We’re about to have sex – I get snatched up by a dragon.”

“That last one was really your fault.”

“ _My point is_ , this isn’t exactly proving to be a safe line of action, you know?”

Natasha offered Clint a shrug and a grin, and then kicked his feet out from under him. “He doesn’t seem to mind,” she said as Clint hit the floor with a thump. “In fact, that seems to be a selling point. And in all honesty? If he’s still interested at this point you can’t blame yourself. He’s a survivor.”

Clint picked himself up with a grimace. “He might not survive much longer with me around.” He dodged a punch, grabbed Natasha’s leg when she aimed a kick and him, and flipped her around. “Tony has a point about dating civilians.”

Natasha twisted away from him, and stuck her tongue out. “You’re really going to take Tony’s advice when it comes to your love life?” she asked, moving back in for another attack.

“Love is for children,” Clint reminded her, and Natasha frowned. She grabbed Clint’s belt, accepted the punch to her ribs, and then clipped the underside of his jaw with enough force to make Clint dizzy. She floored him, and neatly sat in his chest, both hands gripping the front of his vest.

“I don’t believe in love,” she said bluntly. Clint already knew that. With Natasha’s history, Clint was sometimes amazed to find that she believed in anything. “But that doesn’t mean I’m right.” She stared down at Clint with an unhappy furrow between her eyebrows. It was the expression she wore when things didn’t work the way they should, when she had to improvise and had a fleeting moment of doubt. She flicked him between the eyes – knock out, and the annoyed gesture of a sibling. That, more than anything else, made Clint stop and heed her next words. “You _promised_.”

“I know,” Clint replied. 

Natasha climbed off him, and didn’t offer to help Clint up. “Go apologise to him.”

“I will,” Clint said. “In the morning. First thing.”

“After breakfast,” Natasha corrected. “You don’t want the sound of your stomach rumbling drowning out the important bit.”

“Right,” Clint agreed, picking himself up off the floor at last. “First thing, right after breakfast.”

Breakfast at SHIELD was served at six am sharp. After a night of no sleep and a shitty mug of coffee, Clint took the scenic route over to Stark Tower to mooch some finer food from Tony’s breakfast bar. Breakfast at Stark tower could be an all day affair, with the right motivation.

After twenty minutes of grunting answers at his team mates and three hours of being left alone, Pepper sat down opposite Clint with a stack of papers. They had ‘Stark Industries’ branded across the top, and long strings of numbers underneath. Clint was pretty sure they were something to do with finances. He was very sure that he didn’t want to know. “Good toast?” Pepper asked. Clint had been sitting at the kitchen table for a long time. The toast had probably been good at some point, but it was well past cold and the jam was starting to congeal.

“I’ve had better,” Clint replied honesty.

Pepper popped the top off her coffee (Clint had taken Phil coffee. They’d finally had coffee together, damnit) and licked at the foam that was stuck inside the lid. “Do you have any plans for today?” Given that it was nearing midday and Clint was still in his pyjamas, a normal person would have assumed that no, Clint had no plans and would probably never have plans again, and that he’d spend the rest of his life eating cereal from the packet and watching infomercials.

That said, Pepper lived in a building powered by a circle of light, with a mix of geniuses and idiots who all punched things really hard for a living. Pepper had given up on normality a long time ago, she just did a very good job of pretending otherwise.

“I need to go apologise to someone,” Clint mumbled.

Pepper glanced over at him, then carefully turned her gaze back to her coffee. Clint recognised in that moment that Pepper probably knew everything. Everyone probably knew everything. Clint needed to get some friends who weren’t spies. It would make it easier to hide his failure as a significant other.

“Tony gets me a lot of gifts,” Pepper said at last. For a moment, Clint assumed that Pepper had jumped topics without him noticing, but then she continued. “And they’re all beautiful, and thoughtful while being simultaneously thoughtless. I know that he does it because he wants to fix things. They’re his way of showing me that he cares enough about me to want to make up for whatever he did wrong.”

Right, Clint thought. Buy Phil a gift. Got it.

“But sometimes... Sometimes I just wish that he could put it into words. That he could show me that he knows what he did. Because it’s one thing to be sorry for hurting someone or letting them down, but it’s another thing entirely to actually acknowledge and take responsibility for what you’ve done.”

Clint nodded slowly. “I can see that.”

“But you didn’t need to hear all of that,” Pepper said brusquely, clipping the lid back on her coffee and gathering her papers up. She was embarrassed, preparing to evacuate the scene.

“Actually, I kinda did,” Clint admitted. He looked over at Pepper, and gave her a genuine smile. “Thanks.”

Pepper smiled back, though there was a wry, self-deprecating quality to it. “Well, I’m hardly the person to be giving relationship advice...”

“I think you’re the smartest one of us,” Clint blurted out. “About some things.” He stood up and deposited his cold toast into the trash.

Pepper’s smile softened into something a little more genuine, though still playful. “I’m not an Avenger,” she reminded him. It was practically Pepper’s catchcry, whenever big red buttons needed pressing or battles needed to be planned. 

“Yeah you are,” Clint replied. He punched Pepper in the arm as he passed her on his way out of the kitchen.

“Good luck,” she called after him.

Pepper Potts, with a company to run and a Tony to manage, still took some time out to talk to a sulking marksman. “You too,” Clint called over his shoulder. He’d apologise to Phil. He’d save the present for Pepper.

With her advice wrapped around his brain as a ‘how to’ guide, Clint dragged himself through the shower and into clean clothes, and then headed out to set things right. Because Phil was important to him. Because Clint was sick of feeling bad about something he could have fixed already.

Because, most importantly, if he didn’t get his act together soon then Natasha and Pepper were going to team up and kick his ass.


End file.
